Attributed to the Maestro delle Storie del Pane Portrait of a Man, possibly Matteo di Sebastiano di Bernardino Gozzadini ca. 1485-95 Metropolitan Museum of Art
Love among the elite of Renaissance Italy could be far cruder and more immediate than is suggested by the idealized love and remote adoration for Laura de Noves that filled the heart of the great 14th-century humanist Francesco Petrarch. For Renaissance artists, who took their cues not only from Petrarch but also from earthy writers like the Boccaccio as well as mythology and the Old Testament, the celebration of love required that they flatter both the high and low tastes of their patrons, using the double-speak of allegorical meanings to indulge in scabrous metaphors when necessary.
